By Lee Cullum, KERA 90.1 Commentator
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-490498.mp3
Commentary: Balance
Dallas, TX –
Balance seems to be the watchword of the hour. From presidents to preachers, the exhortation is the same: life must be balanced or it isn't life at all. It's merely an extended stint on the elliptical trainer, rounded, as the poet said, by a sleep.
But there's not a lot of balance going around. Ask people truly dedicated to work or children or a political campaign or a cause, and they will tell you with considerable chagrin of the drastic tilting of their days toward an effort both strenuous and consuming.
Our problem is we don't know what we mean by balance. Is it a fixed number of hours working in the office, working out, seeing friends, watching movies, cheering at soccer games animated by six-year-olds? This sounds like a balanced diet. Or is it a sort of food pyramid? If so, what is the base at the bottom? The peak at the top?
By balance do we mean seeking a proper relationship between work and prayer, as St. Benedict did? Or is it the American ideal of work and play? Does play turn out to be work in itself the work of competitive sports, frenetic socializing, relentless self-improvement? If so, where is the balance? What we're really doing in our quest for balance is walking a tightrope, swaying from side to side, desperate to stay upright, frantic not to fall.
The truth is that balance is too weak a word for what we need. A friend said to me once, "Why don't you stop trying to be perfect and start trying to be whole?" To be whole, so a dictionary told me, means to be in an "uninjured, unbroken, intact or undiminished state." That's not likely. As Edward Albee wrote once, "Without your scars who are you?" We can't avoid being hurt. But there's more: to be whole also means to be "a thing complete in itself...taking everything relevant into account."
Isn't that deeper than the tyrannical and impossible idea of balance? To reach completion within one's self takes moral composure, emotional generosity, powers of reflection. It also requires economy of commitment, careful editing of the extraneous, subtle antennae for those we can help and frequent exposure to extravagant beauty, strong enough to shape the soul.
Wholeness, or the holy life, cannot be discovered in the arranging of the schedule, though the management of time is a crucial ingredient. Time, after all, is a precious resource. Wholeness cannot be found in a righteous round of family activities, though obligations to family can never be neglected. Wholeness does not reside, either, in the odd admonition to "move on," or "get on with your life." We are moving on, with or without the involvement of our own active will. Whatever our lives are at this moment, no matter how trying, those are our lives. The faithful and imaginative living of them is what will lead us, finally, to our whole selves.
The high wire is not the answer. Completion through the bounty of the earth-from which we receive, to which we give-- is.
Lee Cullum is a contributor to the Dallas Morning news and to KERA.
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